Beyond Eyes (Xbox ONE)

This game popped up on a friend feed and looked like a really easy quick completion. Destiny is going nowhere fast mainly due to my apathy of not wanting to find other people to play with and Borderlands has only recently been completed so I thought I would treat myself to an easy 1,000 points. I was right on the easy but it came at a price.

Beyond Eyes follows the story of Rae, a ten year old girl who was blinded by fireworks. After the accident, she is visited by a cat called Nani (not the former Manchester United footballer) on a semi-regular basis. One day Nani stops showing up so it’s up to the blind ten year old to find out what happened to the cat... HANG ON, WHAT! A ten year old blind girl is allowed to go wandering off by herself because a cat that isn’t even hers stops showing up? Rae has got bigger issues than a missing stray. She has the most fucked up careless parents in the world.

Anyway, poor parenting aside, the gameplay sees you exploring the world as a blind girl does – using sounds to determine her surroundings. The more you explore the world, the more colour comes into it and more of your surroundings are revealed. You come across many things in the world which are only identified as you get close to them. It’s kind of effective as a gameplay mechanic however, some of the levels are really hard to explore... given the fact that Rae is blind. Chapter 5 is the most frustrating because the colour covers itself over after you have explored it making it nigh on impossible to work out which way you are meant to be going.

The sound effects are there to drive the game but given the fact that Rae is blind and it’s supposedly all you have, the music causes the game to become quite depressing before you finish it, despite its short length.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 10 Achievements

With only 10 achievements I would have thought this was a quick one but the way I played meant that the first achievement I unlocked was for completing the story. The majority of the achievements are secret and involve having to do something in certain chapters with only two exceptions.

The first one that was a pain was finding everything’s true identity. It’s a pain because it’s quite easy to miss things in a game where the main character is blind and it does become time consuming exploring everywhere because Rae moves at about 0.05 miles per hour. The last thing I found was the dog, which carries its own achievement, and the reason was this was that I had to take the blind girl directly towards a dangerous unidentified snarling beast... only to find it’s a nice doggy. Bullshit. Why would I want the blind girl to have her face ripped off by a dog? For an achievement called Bravery of course!

The last one that was a semi-pain in the ass was finding all of the Nani experiences (and no, these are not experiences found on a football field). These relate to Rae’s apparent ability to sense where her cat friend has been previously and some of these are off the beaten track. This doesn’t really make any sense because you are following Nani so why would you need to look out of the way of the main path?

Downloadable Content – N/A

In summary, Beyond Eyes offers a short and unenjoyable gaming experience that doesn’t make any sense in terms of parental care or the real world. It becomes depressing after about an hour and is even more depressing come the end of the game. Zero replay value and in terms of content it’s not worth paying more than £10 for.